"Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective."
James 5:16
"No man is an island." We've all heard the saying and it gets kind of old, but the truth it packs is something we never outgrow. There is power in remaining in fellowship for many reasons, one of the most vital being the opportunity to walk in accountability with one another.
Accountability is defined as the act of being held responsible for ones thoughts, actions and decisions. Christian accountability applies at so many levels - from an organizational level to a personal level. We are to grow in accountability when it comes to how we lead others or even our own personal lives.
Accountability is important for the obvious reason that it helps us grow, but I'd like to go a little deeper than that today by sharing three ways accountability helps us grow and why we are to catch every opportunity to build accountability with fellow believers.
Power of Collective Healing
One of the most important ways that accountability applies is in the area of changing sinful patterns. We want to become of spiritual nature, but the sinful nature drives us away from God's good, perfect and pleasing will. Accountability with fellow believers helps us keep check and holds us responsible for the sins we commit.
Although confession to one another is not what redeems, the correction, edification and instruction that comes as a result of it is God's way of applying His loving discipline to us. The guidance and impartation from others becomes God's extension of applying growth into our lives.
Remembering Who We Follow
When Jesus called people to follow Him, He did so with the pretense that we would follow Him as a group, not as disconnected individuals. So many times, Paul calls for unity in the body of Christ for the very reason that it brings a level of accountability amongst one another to always remember who we are following.
We do not follow programs, pastors or doctrines per se, but the chief end we strive for is Christ Himself. When we walk with others, we are easily reminded of that call to follow nothing else except Christ and remain on course. A ship that sails alone can easily lose it's way, but one that shares a course can easily keep it.
Affirmation of Our Call
When walking in accountability, it can be very helpful to follow with people of the same call or with people who understand your call. That way, we are given friendly shoves every single time we get off course. In space exploration, pinpoint accuracy in coordinates are everything. Throw off a course for the sun from earth by an eighth of an inch and we'll end up in Jupiter.
In a spiritual sense, we don't want to end up in "Jupiter" when God calls us to shoot for the sun. We want to be where God wants us to be and accountability helps us do that.
